


pins you (makes you weak)

by seventeencrows



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: M/M, Mind Control, Threats of Violence, daniel jacobi has a plan, his plan is -COME UP WITH A PLAN-, improper care and feeding of your firearm, listen okay it's mr. cutter just take this whole fic with a grain(ery) of salt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 21:13:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12418266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventeencrows/pseuds/seventeencrows
Summary: Jacobi takes a gamble that Eiffel can't win. Mr. Cutter observes.





	pins you (makes you weak)

**Author's Note:**

> written for the wonderful [kate](http://courf.tumblr.com) at one in the morning because she is a fantastic human being and because i have zero impulse control
> 
> title is from "anything that you cannot sacrifice pins you. makes you predictable, makes you weak.”

This, Jacobi thinks as his fist slams into Officer Klein’s nose, is an absolutely terrible fucking idea.

The blood bubbles in midair and Klein reels backwards, hands loosening on the cuff he’d been clamping around Jacobi’s wrist. It’s just enough. The momentum of his punch sends Jacobi reeling too, over the edge of the table he’d very nearly been strapped to and free of the cuffs bolted into it. Processing, Cutter had called it, and smiled like he expected them to go down without a fight.

Immediate and orderly surrender his ass—Jacobi _knows what that thing does._

The Hermes crew is stronger now, not afraid of pain or threats, but they’re also slower. There’s a pause, short as it is, before they move as they’re compelled to and that’s all Jacobi needs. It’s just enough for him to get out from under their hands, past their arms and out the door.

There’s a reason he wasn’t the point man in the SI-5, the guy in charge of making the plans, because as he rounds the corner he discovers that he has _no idea what the fuck that plan is._ Vaguely, he’d thought something along the lines of _get Lovelace, get Kepler, break Hera out, kick some ass_ , but he makes it nearly all the way to the bridge by the time he notices that

  * he has no idea where they’re keeping Lovelace
  * he has no idea where they’re keeping Kepler
  * Miranda Pryce could probably literally eat him alive
  * absolutely no one is following him.



The corridors are empty. The station is silent. There are no alarms or lockdown protocols or the clamour of bodies coming down the halls after him.

Something, in short, is _not right._

He finally comes across them in the _mess_ of all places—he should have known, should have remembered Cutter’s flair for the dramatic and known that something was wrong when the lights in the room didn’t come on automatically as he crossed the threshold, intent on ducking in to find something, anything, to use as a weapon.

But Jacobi’s had a stressful year, and he didn’t notice, and he nearly jumps out of his skin when the lights come on all at once and Cutter croons, “Hello, Daniel.”

Mr. Cutter is waiting for him in the corner of the room, one leg hooked under the bench so he can sit comfortably on the tabletop. Mr. Cutter is also not alone—someone looms over his shoulder, floating gently just off to his left. Someone Jacobi recognizes, with a cut lip and bruised cheek and blood drying in his hairline.

“Eiffel, goddamnit, what happ—” Jacobi stops. Eiffel doesn’t look scared, or worried, or—or _anything._ He floats by Cutter’s side like a ragdoll, upright only because someone had tossed him there that way and it stuck. “Doug, what’s going on?”

“See now, _Doug,”_ Cutter tells him, checking his fingernails like there’s easily a dozen things he’d rather be doing that this, “Against _all_ odds, it turns out Doug is fantastic at following orders! Once you, ah, tweak a few things, you know—a nerve ending here, an action potential there, why, Doug is the model of a perfect officer. He follows orders, he doesn’t talk back, he does whatever I ask him to.” Cutter claps a hand on Doug’s shoulder and he doesn’t brace himself, just bobs with the motion of Cutter’s palm. His hands hang loosely at his sides, and for a moment Jacobi thinks they have a chance. There’s a gun in Eiffel’s holster. He sees it, now he just needs to _get_ to it, or get Doug to wake the fuck up—

Cutter sees it too. Or, more importantly, Cutter knows damn well it’s there and he sees Jacobi see it, and Cutter smiles. “Put the gun in your mouth, Doug.”

Doug puts the gun in his mouth.

Something in Jacobi’s chest clenches so tight he can’t breathe. “Doug—”

“I’m afraid Doug’s a little preoccupied at the moment, Daniel,” Cutter tells him with all the barely contained glee of a child pulling the wings off a fly. “I don’t think he can hear you.”

It’s a fucking _lie,_ Jacobi _knows_ it is, he can see it in Eiffel’s terrified eyes and the glint of the overhead lights on the barrel of the gun. He’s talking to Cutter but he can’t stop looking at Doug. “You _really_ don’t have to do this.”

He can hear Cutter’s smile just fine without seeing it. “Oh, but I _really_ do.” He hovers just in Jacobi’s periphery like something out of a goddamn nightmare, and Jacobi jumps when he says, “On three, Doug,” like he’s talking about the weather, and then adds, “I’m going to have to make a _point,_ now, Daniel.”

“No, look—please—” Jacobi puts his hands up. “I give up, okay? I’ll go back, and I’ll get on the table, and you can do whatever you want. He has nothing to do with this.”

“But he _does._ Because here I thought—here Warren _told_ me—that your service was exemplary. That you were good at your job. That you, Daniel Jacobi, could follow orders.” Then, as an afterthought, “One.”

Doug turns the safety off.

“You’re bluffing,” Jacobi blurts, desperate. His hands shake like they haven’t in years. “He just jumped into the star, he probably met those aliens and you can’t just kill the only guy who—”

“Oh, I know all about that!” Cutter says, “Doug told me so himself.” He asks, “Didn’t you, Doug?” and laughs when Doug mumbles something around the barrel. “Two.”

Isn’t this familiar? How many times has he heard this countdown before? How long before this goddamn miserable universe stops thinking it’s funny to make him relive this over and over—or is this his own personal sort of time loop? Get to zero, get to ten, someone dies. Lather, rinse, repeat.

“Doug, Doug listen to me—” and how many movies has he seen, crammed onto Maxwell’s tiny couch and bickering over popcorn toppings, where the hero makes a speech, an impassioned plea to a—to a loved one; they break the magic spell or the mind control and they’re _okay—_ "Doug, please, you don’t want to do this—Eiffel, fuck, please, please put the gun down—come on, man, Doug, you’re stronger than this—babe, please, I know you can hear me—”       

He’s not even talking to Doug anymore, not really—he’s begging now, groveling in the hopes that Cutter will think it’s funny enough to let Doug live, to give him one more fucking day—  

“Three.”

“Doug, _please—”_

The gun clicks, loud enough he can hear it over the roaring in his ears and he’s so dizzy he can’t breathe, all the blood rushing to his head. Doug still has the gun in his mouth, eyes blank and unmoving until Cutter waves him off. “That’s enough, Doug. Please escort Daniel back for processing now, if you would be so kind.”

It takes until Doug’s hands close tight around his arms for Jacobi to react, to flinch away. He doesn’t get far; Doug’s grip is painfully tight—”What?”

Cutter’s smile doesn’t budge as he crosses his arms and taps a finger against his chin. “Didn’t you say something when this whole little shindig started? That you gave up? That you would get on the table and let us do whatever we wanted?” He tilts his head to the side. “Or—oh, or did I mishear you?” He asks like he doesn’t know the answer. “Do we need to try this again, Daniel?”

Again, he doesn’t need to say, with the gun loaded.

“Oh. I—” Jacobi swallows. Lets himself be steered toward the door by a man who looks straight through him when their eyes meet, and he can’t see anything in them at all. “No, sir.”

Cutter smiles wider still. “That’s more like it.”

**Author's Note:**

> mmmmm i was weirdly hesitant to post this, and i can't quite figure out why (lmao i mean more-so than i already am to post my fic)
> 
> i'm @rahayn on tumblr, you are welcome to come and yell


End file.
